Find out more about lactate and how this incredible molecule plays many important roles in the body. Discover how you can use lactate as a preferential fuel source, how lactate may actually reduce acidity in tissues and even act as a ‘signalling hormone’ to drive training adaptations.

Practice? Remember when you were young(er) and you went to practice? In team sports like basketball or football, you go to practices and spend upward of 70-80% of your time focused on improving your skills. Now you train, right? What’s the difference?

We have often discussed the value and importance of High Intensity Intervals (HIT) here at Pez. There is a reason, of course, they are a central component of racing success, yet questions remain, so let’s dive into the lactic acid pool once again!

You’ve spent months preparing mentally, endless hours physically, all building towards THIS EVENT, this focus. Or maybe it’s just a Saturday and you went racing. Either way the let down and psychological weight of a sub-par performance can be a slippery slope, so what can you do to move forward?

You lean forward, driving down on to the pedals, legs exploding, chest burning, mouth wide open, sucking as much air as possible into your hungry lungs. That process of laboured breathing and ventilation is a primal force. Can we train our respiratory muscles to decrease the stress of breathing or even ride faster?

The heart is a muscle, and can be trained just like any other muscle in your body. Cardiovascular mechanisms and the inability to supply blood and nutrients to the different tissues in the body remain at the “heart” of many of the proposed models of fatigue, so this seems a good place to start our exploration…

Cycling, while generally pleasurable, is ultimately all about pain and suffering at the sharp end of competition. Fatigue and exhaustion is something we have all felt at some time or other. However, why do we actually get tired on the bike and what constitutes fatigue?

Fasted and ‘controlled carbohydrate’ training is getting increasing amounts of attention. There are suggestions that these protocols could even ‘remodel’ muscle in favour of using fat as a fuel. PEZ explores what the scientific evidence says, how pro cycling teams are using these approaches and what we could learn to enhance our performance in practise.

Watching the final crush of Milan San Remo is to view the crescendo of many hours of impressive metabolism. 1000 kilojoule/hour are common place in the racing peloton, and most surely the last hour of M-S-R is way above that value. Those guys are lean and mean. Are You? Look, I’m not saying…

If cycling is a sport of suffering, most of the time that suffering comes down to our muscles feeling like anchors on a climb or exploding in agony in a sprint. But fatigue, like love, is a many-splendored thing. Does the type and location of fatigue occur at different parts of our nerves and muscles depending on the type of exercise that we do?

With the eventual approach of (hopefully) late winter in the northern hemisphere, most of us are transitioning out of preparatory or base training and looking towards incorporating higher intensity efforts into our programs. What are some of the thoughts behind planning intervals properly?

How many times have you finished a race and not had that last extra effort needed to win or get a top finish? Let’s look at a few possible explanations as to why this common occurrence may happen and what you can do to remedy the problem.

It is now several months into indoor trainer season for many northern cyclists, and the same workouts are getting a bit repetitive. With some of us facing another month or more before reliably being able to get outside, what are some ways to spice up some tried and true workouts for the great indoors?

Chances are if you are reading this you race bikes. You may be a seasoned veteran of the two wheeled wars, or perhaps you are just dipping your toe into the ocean of experiences that racing brings. Either way, you can learn and help others learn by embracing skills development as the starting point to racing success.

Late January is typically the depths of winter in the northern hemisphere, so many of us have been riding indoors for more than a month. Cabin fever gets us debating whether to dare a ride outdoors or head back to the trainer. Anyway, it seems like a good time to go over some rules concerning exercising outdoors in the cold.

Lots of miles in exotic locales and riding with your favourite cycling heroes - you really can’t beat a training camp as a perfect working holiday. However, what if you can’t or don’t want to join an organized camp and want to design your own camp solo or with your team?

Another New Year is upon us and what better way to start it here at the Pez Toolbox than with a list of 10 New Year’s resolutions for your cycling. Throughout the 2015 season, when things are going both good and bad, check back to this list to keep your training on track:

As the 2014 event season is winding down (or has become a distant memory), a natural and necessary transition begins to happen toward 2015. This time of transition provides cyclists (from enthusiasts to experienced racers, from development riders to masters) the opportunity to review, establish, and/or reinvent the process to having a successful 2015 campaign.

With the off-season coming to a close and turkey dinners and mashed potatoes upon us, it is most definitely time to put some thought into your training plan for the coming year if you haven’t already done so. Within this planning session you will surely come up against the seemingly interminable argument of base miles vs. high intensity. Is there a preferred approach?

It’s a razor-thin line that we as athletes walk between being extremely lean and fit on the one edge, and the precipice of overtraining and increased risk of infections and illness on the other. With flu season upon us, what should we be considering about maintaining our off-season health?